There once was a girl named...

Big Fish Games hiring a MySQL DBA

lisa@livejournal.com — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:03:34 GMT

Come join me and my team in support of the most successful casual game portal online today!

Big Fish Games is a global leader and innovator in the online games industry, producing and delivering the world’s best games and game experiences. Big Fish Games Studios develops and publishes the industry’s leading brands for computers, mobile devices and consoles. Its portfolio of hit games includes Mystery Case Files®, Hidden Expedition™ and Azada™. Big Fish Games’ portal at www.bigfishgames.com distributes more games worldwide than any other online site and offers visitors a rapidly expanding selection of content by launching A New Game Every Day! ™

The Senior DBA will lead the database team responsible for supporting the current MySQL infrastructure and design. This will include database design and architecture for existing and new initiatives, database monitoring, tuning, and capacity planning for production systems.

Click to apply

Rendesvous on Friday night!

lisa@livejournal.com — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:03:34 GMT

Come party in the Grotto with Grave Danger Friday night!

New generation of derby - Seattle Derby Brats

lisa@livejournal.com — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:03:50 GMT

20090307.RCRG5.2_0415
Originally uploaded by Axle Adams

I wasn't able to skate in Saturday night's Rat City Rollergirl's game at Key Arena, but Sophia was!

The Seattle Derby Brats played mini-games during half time of the big girl games. Sophia was feeling under the weather and opted not to jam, but she went out there and did her best blocking to grab the flags of the opposing jammers.

Sophia has been skating as Feline Fury for over a year now for the Seattle Derby Brats, and watching her and her teammates skate in front of almost 5,000 people like it was nothing was really amazing. As a coach and a fan, it has been so exciting to watch them improve over time. As a derby player, seeing their dedication to the sport is humbling - they really are future of roller derby!

Russian Bathhouse

lisa@livejournal.com — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 23:34:23 GMT

I consider it a good weekend if I do at least one thing I've never done before. Today, that was visiting Banya 5, a Russian "urban spa" in the developing South Lake Union area. I've visited Japanese and Korean bathhouses, and now having been to a Russian spa I'm glad to find more similarities than differences. They're all based on hydrotherapy - a wonderful experience of immersing yourself in different types of water of varying degrees in temperature, exposing your body to the elements for rejuvenation and a bit of adrenaline from the extreme temperatures. Banya has three pools - hot, really fucking cold, and tepid salt water. There is a (very hot) dry sauna and a eucalyptus steam room. Banya is co-ed and bathing suits are required, which isn't as enjoyable for me but means there is more conversation among guests and less of the shock of hanging out with people naked. At 11AM on a Sunday morning most visitors were Russian and obviously die-hard spa guests.

I was given the advice of enjoying the pools as following: dry sauna until I couldn't stand the heat, quick plunge in the cold water, then a soak in the tepid salt water. Every time I encounter a cold water plunge I think of a million things I'd rather do instead, but I took the advice and didn't regret it.

I got a salt scrub and Elisa did the deep tissue massage - both of which were excellent and I'm pleased with the softness of my skin. Despite what I consider to be kind of a pretentious looking entrance, it is very laid back and relaxing environment. There's also a Vodka bar next door that we'll have to try on our next (evening) trip.

If you're looking for a good way to get a break from the cold, gray Seattle winter, I highly recommend Banya!

Rat City Rollergirls dance party Saturday!

lisa@livejournal.com — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:09:33 GMT

Tickets are sold out for the Black Eyed Burlesque this weekend, but you can still dance with us Saturday night after our show!</a>

marriage

lisa@livejournal.com — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:32:18 GMT

IMG66699b
Originally uploaded by Joe Rollerfan

I FINALLY got to marry the beautiful and talented Ann Munition and RENEW my vows to Darcy Rant, Rettig to Rumble, and Edie Brickwall (in spirit). I'm a very lucky derby girl :)

also I think I married this bottle of champagne:

TV

lisa@livejournal.com — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:27:34 GMT

Photo by Joe Rollerfan

Last Saturday night, our championship game was filmed for Comcast On Demand. Afterward I did a short interview with Queen Mum and we discussed the game while I looked in to the camera awkwardly. Our team lost but only by a few points, and we closed a 50 point deficit in the second period! We also discussed my transition between Bay Area and Rat City, and differences I've noticed between the leagues. The most notable distinction for me is the focus on speed and endurance that I see on Rat City. Whether or not this equates to a winning strategy we'll see in the next couple of months in the Western Regionals and then (hopefully) WFTDA Nationals.

The On Demand filming is a trial and I hope it is well viewed. Seeing flat track derby on cable and in homes across the country is exciting to say the least!

Rat City Rollergirls Burlesque!

lisa@livejournal.com — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:07:39 GMT

Come see a group of talented women try their best to wow you off skates. It's my first time performing burlesque!

Buy tickets now before they sell out!

Roller Derby in Portland THIS Weekend

lisa@livejournal.com — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:03:50 GMT

Buy Tickets here

The first ever face-off between two Northwest heavy hitters, the Rat City Rollergirls All-Star Travel Team and the Rose City Rollers Wheels of Justice! This bout (held in Portland, so grab your keys or head to the train station) will be amazing! Both Rose City and Rat City are heading to Regionals in October, and with any luck, we'll both make it to Nationals (we're hosting 'em, but it sure would be nice to PLAY in them too!). How exciting! You won't want to miss it!

Important details: Tickets are EXTREMELY limited (only 400 total). Doors at 5:30pm, bout starts at 6:00pm.

Roller Derby on Saturday

lisa@livejournal.com — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:08:52 GMT

There are still tickets left for the game this Saturday at Magnuson Park. This is my first game as a Rat City Rollergirl since 2005! Come cheer for my return!

When: This Saturday August 11th, 5:30PM
Where: Magnuson Park/Sand Point, Seattle

Do you play poker?

lisa@livejournal.com — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:03:28 GMT

2nd Annual Rat City Rollergirls’ Poker Open
“You Hold Some, You Fold Some”
An Old West Style Poker Show Down!
Sunday, August 3, 2008

Time: 3:00 PM
Donation: $50
Location: Secret, West Seattle hideout to be revealed only to those Ace-high enough to gain entrance.

Proceeds from this private poker shindig go towards the Rat City Rollergirls travel and round up fund. It will take place Sunday afternoon in an exclusive West Seattle hideout. You getta know where it is when you getta ticket, cowboy.

Admission gets your saddle sore rear a seat in the Rat City Rollergirls’ Poker Open Tournament (thanks to our friends at Seattle Poker Open -- http://seattlepokeropen.com/). Plus, Cookie will be unloading all the chuck and medicinal elixirs your weary bones crave.

At the bare minimum you will: eat, bend an elbow, party, and best of all get to square off at the poker table with your favorite league skaters and Rat City All-Stars! We aint no tenderfoots now! If you're a card shaark, you'll also have a chance to win prize bundles galore from our generous sponsors.

Space is extremely limited. Be there, or be yella!

Buy tickets here!

Photos from Bay Area Derby Girls

lisa@livejournal.com — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:04:42 GMT

Once again Boss Hog catches some great candids before and after the game. This time he shot all in film (gasp!)

I like to win!

Lisa Lawless and Deadly Nightshade of the Oakland Outlaws.

On Vox: Oakland Outlaws vs San Francisco SHEvil Dead

lisa@livejournal.com — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:44:10 GMT

Tickets are on sale now for the April 26th Bay Area Derby Girls second bout of the season. This time we're back in Oakland at the Dry Ice Arena. Tickets are for sale only online, and they will sell out! Buy them now. This will be your last chance to see me skating with the Bay Area Derby Girls before my move to Seattle! The after party is guaranteed to rock.

Lisa Lawless 42

Originally posted on lisa.vox.com

Derby weekend

lisa@livejournal.com — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:53:15 GMT

This weekend the BAD Girls co-hosted The Big One, a California derby tournament in Davis. I put off thinking about the event just long enough to get asked to be an announcer as part of my required volunteer shift. Two days of derby, several hours of talking in to a mic, not enough sleep, a lot of beer and ribs and hot dogs. And now I need a derby vacation.

I tried to focus more on explaining what was going on in the game, rather than color commentary. I used my old choral training for annunciation and my karaoke experience for speaking in to the mic, etc. The hardest part, by far, was knowing how I was planning to end a sentence before I started it. Turns out I almost never use that skill. I also had to try very hard not to give away too much of the game to the players, or to start telling the girls how they should be playing their game ;)

The Bad Girls cleaned house in the tournament, btw.

Every time I spend time with derby I'm reminded of how lucky I am to be a part of this.

Back from Belize

lisa@livejournal.com — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 02:56:09 GMT

Had a beautiful time on Caye Caulker. Got to see a full lunar eclipse, dance at a full moon bonfire, chase after a sea-turtle, jump off a diving board, got a tan, and see another beautiful sunset on a sailboat. The highlight of the trip was when Henry asked me to marry him, and I said yes!

As the sun was setting we grabbed a private spot on the sail boat and started our usual smooching. Henry seemed more emotional than usual, which made sense once he asked me to marry him. I told him yes, with a huge smile and tears in my eyes. (The tears were from the wind, of course.)

Henry nervously fished the ring out of his pocket. After the ring was on and I dried my eyes a bit, he waved to the captain, who paused the reggae to make the announcement to everyone on the boat. We were toasted with champagne (Henry had the bottle stashed in an ice chest before we left) and more reggae.

The rest of the sunset sail was full of smiles and congratulations. The mood was perfect as the full moon rose and the sky filled with stars. We danced and drank rum punch and began our plans for the ceremony...

I know we've been dating for a bazillion years but no time would feel more perfect. I'm so happy, guys!

Thanks to henrylyne for sharing his island again, and Maile for the photos!

Six Apart is Hiring!

lisa@livejournal.com — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 06:52:02 GMT

The Six Apart Operations team is looking for a Senior Network Engineer to join the team. You should be in the Bay Area (or in to moving here) and awesome. You'll be working with the best operations teams supporting the sites you love. You wouldn't say no to the baby animals, would you?

If interested, send your resume to jobs@sixapart.com or contact me directly.

Halloween

lisa@livejournal.com — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 23:12:38 GMT

brad as Facebook and me as robot maid

I wore this costume (with skates) for a themed house party last month and I was so excited about wearing it again. I couldn't pull off the skates (Brad wouldn't allow it in his house, etc) for Halloween but I still loved it. I was originally shooting for Rosie from the Jetsons but things got a bit more, uh, modern. Full costume shot behind the cut.

These photos taken by brad and more are here.

Brad Fitzpatrick is leaving Six Apart

lisa@livejournal.com — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 04:57:38 GMT

First of all I'd like to say congratulations and good luck to Brad Fitzpatrick on the decision to make the big change and move on from his first job! As a co-worker and friend of Brad's I know he's making the best decision for him right now. Nine years is a long time to work on a single project, any project, and I've always felt it showed a certain stubborn (or masochistic) side of him to have continued to be involved for as long as he has.

When I first met Brad (21st birthday I think?) there was no way I'd have guessed we'd end up where we are today. Over the years I've worked on Livejournal as a systems administrator, gone through acquisition with Six Apart, eventually moved to San Francisco to extend my role beyond just that of a systems administrator, to my current position of Director of Operations Engineering for Six Apart. I'm extremely thankful for everything he has taught me directly or indirectly, and I have a lot of gratitude toward him for making all this possible.

Brad has done a tremendous job creating Livejournal and growing it from nothing, with the support from his family, his friends, his community and his employees. The people at Six Apart may not all have been there for the first purchase of a server, the invention of mood icons, the first power outage, the partitioning to user clusters, the horribly painful early days of implementation of memcached but some of us have!

Brad has always worked with a team of capable individuals, a group that over time was able to take on more and more of the responsibility for the community and the site. This includes decisions regarding support, engineering, financial, marketing and operations. Sometimes these decisions haven't always been the best, and we've certainly had to learn from mistakes. I have felt lucky to have had the support from Brad to help in technical decisions or problems when needed, but it has honestly been a long time since he was in a position of responsibility regarding the technical infrastructure of LJ. I'm sure it has been frustrating for him at times to not have that role, but the site has continued to run, grow and improve, in ways that he and I could never have managed between just the two of us before we joined Six Apart.

The notion that Brad has been the only major contributing force to Livejournal over the last few years is misleading. Six Apart is host to a large pool of talent whose contributions are utilized across all of our products - and other sites! Features added to Perlbal originally to help block spam for Typepad is used to help throttle bots on LJ - allowing us to have the site crawled by spiders (good for search engines) but not impact performance. Ben Trott's work on TheSchwartz is used to implement such features as instant notifications and the return of birthday reminders. hachi is our resident MogileFS expert and contributor, which we use across all our sites for reliable data storage. groknaut has taken on the not so pretty task of wrangling an unruly collection of hardware gathered through the years and retrofitting our infrastructure to something more manageable and sane.

With a history as long and exciting as Livejournal - 9 years is a long time in the tech world - it is hard to get beyond feeling that we're always trying to catch up. With the latest addition of dormando as our Mysql DBA I think we've got a better fighting chance. I'm at least glad to be rid of *one* of my many jobs. Livejournal had 700,000 users when I became the (only) Livejournal systems administrator in 2003. At that time we were struggling to keep up with unprecedented growth. Today our servers are supported by a team of more than ten very capable and motivated members of an operations team in a 24x7 environment. We've got a dedicated group of engineers on staff who use the site themselves, who care about the same subjects we hear from our users. Work continues on developing the core technologies Brad and the people working for Livejournal helped create (Memcached, Perlbal, MogileFS...) and we'll continue to use these technologies for *all* of our products. Livejournal ran with a skeleton crew of developers and systems administrators for years, and I'm glad to see that - even with Brad leaving - we're continuing to make positive changes.

There is an assumption made by many that Brad has been in a position of management for Livejournal, but as he's written, this has not been the case for awhile. In fact, long time employee Brad Whitaker has been the very capable Engineering Manager for Livejournal for some time now. Brad Whitaker started working on Livejournal a bit before me (and before he was paid for it), and remains one of the most dedicated individuals I work with. That Six Apart has continued to acknowledge his contributions to the site, and by keeping him in a key position of influence I know that they continue to trust his experience as a manager, a developer, an employee as well as a user.

So I wish you luck, Brad Fitzpatrick, in your future projects and a very sincere thank you for everything you've done, for Livejournal, for Six Apart, for the Open Source community, and for me. While your leaving is certainly symbolic of a change in the Livejournal life-cycle, I don't fear this change - and I know we'll be able to continue to grow regardless.

So that happened

lisa@livejournal.com — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 01:53:40 GMT

Have I got an update for you! But not now. For now, I want to say Happy Systems Administration Day to all you admins out there, and a huge shoutout to everyone on the Six Apart Operations team. You performed brilliantly this week.

Jobby Job at Six Apart

lisa@livejournal.com — Tue, 08 May 2007 18:09:46 GMT

Six Apart is looking to expand our team with another kick ass Mysql DBA. If you have experience working with Mysql in large scale systems with emphasis on high availability send me your resume please!

Job Description, etc.

You'll be working on the database infrastructure for Livejournal, Typepad.com and Vox.com in a bleeding edge technology environment. We make the infrastructure that makes Web2.0 go around.

Plus, you'll be working with me, and I'm pretty much awesome.

lisa@livejournal.com — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:56:09 GMT

Caye Caulker, Belize

lisa@livejournal.com — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 21:39:35 GMT

Me, in love (with the puppy and a man), tan, rested, at peace, HAPPY

We stayed on a small island about 45 minutes by water taxi off from Belize City, called Caye Caulker. Tickets ran from $600-$800 (depending on how far you bought them in advance) and Henry and I stayed in a small room for $15 a night.

The island itself is 5 miles long, but most businesses and hotels are within about a square mile. There are 3 unpaved "streets" - Front, Middle, Back - and most people walk, ride bikes or drive golf carts to get around. Belize is an independent country in Central America, English is the official language, and the local population is made up of people of Mayan, African, Mexican and Spanish descent. The most common non-english language to hear on the island was Creole.

Most of my days involved sleeping as long as I could with the sun on my face and roosters crowing outside (maybe to 9am), eating a slow breakfast at the Amore Cafe with fresh fruit and drinking locally grown organic coffee. If no activities were planned, the day involved wandering around the town, sitting on the front porch in a hammock reading, riding bikes to explore the southern part of the island (with crocodiles!), drinking Belican and rum punch, eating ceviche, tanning and swimming.

I went on two different snorkeling trips, the first with Tiffany by motor boat where I got to see eels, lobster, and swim with a school of sting rays for the first time. The second trip was a full day on a sail boat with Henry and Maile. We swam with more sting rays and nurse sharks (!), more eels, an eagle ray, and schools of barricuda. The water was extremely clear and the sand very white so visibility was fantastic.

In the evening we'd go to the Split for a beer and a dip in the ocean and watch the ball of the sun dissappear over the ocean like I've never seen before.

Night time was either for going to sleep early or for hitting up the local dive and disco. We went to Karaoke twice (first night I performed the same song twice in a row?? because the dj wanted?), and dancing a few times. I learned to dance the Punta and made new dance partner friends. Even scored some digits!

There are some trips that are clearly travel, some clearly vacation, and many more that are a mix. While I've loved many places I've travelled, this was the best vacation yet. I'm still amazed at how relaxed, content and happy I was during the trip, and about how much I loved having Henry there doing the things together we love - exploring, meeting new people, trying new things, eating, relaxing. And all without computers!

All of henry's photos can be found here. Some of my favorites:

Go Slow is the motto for Caye Caulker, and you're reminded of this upon entering the island from water taxi

This gigantic bowl of ceviche was prepared for us moments earlier by Wish Willy. He had just pulled the conch out of the water, chopped it up, mixed with salsa and handed it to us with a bag of chips. After we ate as much as we could he took it away to make some stir-fry (for another customer, I assume).

Our "hotel"

Sunset with pelican

We took a day trip inland for cave tubing and to visit some Mayan ruins. The trip involved 10 of us in a van without seatbelts on this highway going 80mph. This was the most terrifying time of the trip for me - with sharks and eels behind.

In front of some ruins, the ruins of my people.

dan_erat on the porch hammock

Riding bikes to the dump, to view the crocodile. This landing strip is the only paved part of the island. We had to ride down it at one point when stuck on the other side with no way around except back to a growling dog that attacked Henry.

There were so many cute puppies on the island, but this one stole my heart. And Maile's.

Griff swings while waiting for the sunset sailboat.

This guy hangs out at this little grill all day grilling up shrimp sticks for $2.50. We thought we could get some quickly before the sunset sail but ended up having to run to make the boat (with sticks in hand! so dangerous!)

Then Jesus visited us.

Front street

Henry at breakfast on the last morning. He finally got some sun.

The "Split" at one end of the island where the best swimming is, as well as the strongest rum punch. This placed looks more like something out of the Real World Belize than what it is, an extremely casual, non pretentious awesome place to hang out and get drunk (like the rest of the island).

Like stopping to ask for directions

lisa@livejournal.com — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 10:24:12 GMT

I've been brain-deep in work for the past couple of days, but Jeremy Cole made my night by showing me his latest patch for Mysql - a progress indicator!

The Progress_rows number indicates progress within a given step of executing the query. For instance, if you run a SELECT with a GROUP BY that can’t be done using an index, you will see two cycles of Progress_rows: once with a State of “Copying to tmp table” and once with “Sending data”.

"american food" in tokyo

lisa@livejournal.com — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 06:36:04 GMT

I'm here in Tokyo for work, but the second most frequent activity is eating! We've had pizza a couple of times in the office during busy days from the Pizza Hut across the street. While the name is the same, that's about where the similiarties end. Oh, except they have the cheesy puffy crust which I vaguely remember being marketed in the states. So far I've had tastes of: Shrimp and Broccoli with a mayonaise-y sauce, Meat with a gravy sauce, Vegetables with corn and red sauce, "Korean" style pizza with hot dogs in the crust(!!) and shaved pepper on top, Pizza Carbonara which is similiar to the italian pasta dish: bacon and cheese with an egg + cream sauce. None of them were spectacular - it is Pizza Hut, afterall - but they weren't awful at all as long as I didn't think about the ingredients (especially the egg sauce). We were given packets of green chili sauce and maple honey to put on the pizza. As sides, we had fries and sweet potato fries.

The McGriddle is being advertised everywhere in the trains. One man told me he thought it was a japanese invention and was surprised I'd heard of it. I can see why he'd believe that, since it sounds more like something invented here.

konichiwa

lisa@livejournal.com — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 06:28:58 GMT

Garth (my travel partner for this trip) and I made a day trip on shinkansen to another coworker's family home in Hakone, which is famous for onsen (hot springs). The hot springs are literally running down the street! We're stopping our eating and walking for a bit of work, and later on are going to be enjoying some nabe. I just got a CNN breaking alert that said "-- Tsunami warning issued for Japan and surrounding areas after quake east of Kuril Islands, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center says" which was pretty alarming until I realized I'm up in mountains and nowhere near Hokkaido. I've been on edge about earthquakes the whole time I've been here and have prioritized learning japanese that might help in the event of an emergency. Now I've just got to add "shark, bear, vomit" and "plane" to the list and I've got most of my irrational fears covered.